


After All, You Do Know Best

by Glitter_Lisp



Series: Somewhere Along [3]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Kid Fic, Trans Character, Trans Sophie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6230842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glitter_Lisp/pseuds/Glitter_Lisp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sophie has been an actress since the day she was born. She's an expert, and she can do anything, as long as she knows what's expected of her. But with the sudden return of their very own prodigal son, she has no idea how she's supposed to act.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After All, You Do Know Best

Before Sophie Devereaux is anything else, she’s an actor. She’s a woman, a mother, a wife, a director, and as important as all of those are to her, she doesn’t know what she would be if she didn’t have acting. When she was twelve and no one else in her theater class was willing to play Juliet, her hand shot into the air and it felt like coming alive for the first time. When her father told her how strong and smart she was, when he mother called her handsome, when the captain of the football team told her she should try out, she learned to smile and act grateful and proud.

When people called her by the wrong name, always the wrong name, she didn’t correct them. She didn’t even blink. She was simply playing a character. It didn’t bother her to be known by her character’s name instead of hers. Back in those days she hadn’t had any name _but_ her character’s. She stayed up late at night, whispering, “Katherine… Sophie… Alice… Karen, Michelle…” She tried them all on like the shoes in her mother’s closet and lined them up just as they had been before so no one would know. No one ever knew.

She’s a damn good actress, after all.

That’s probably the only thing that keeps her from screaming out loud when she reads the text from Hardison.

“Ah, everybody,” she calls out, her voice steely and in control. “Excuse me,” she says, even louder to be heard over Zachary getting to his authentic place, “everybody, I’m sorry, but I’ve just received a text from my son, I’m so sorry, I have to run home.”

“Is everything okay?” Zachary asks, picking himself up off the floor and looking truly, authentically concerned.

“Oh, yes, everything’s fine,” she trills, throwing things haphazardly into her purse and slinging her scarf around her neck. She snatches her coat up off the back of her chair and hurries out of the theater, calling over her shoulder, “Everything’s totally fine, absolutely, well, it’s mostly, yes we’re all fine, I just need to, well, I’ll see you all on Wednesday!”

She makes it out to her car, climbs in, and then finds herself sitting in silence, still staring at her phone.

 

> _From Hardison:_
> 
> _sophie need u eliot’s here pls come_

She gives herself four seconds to feel everything, then she starts up the car.

* * *

The front door is unlocked when she gets upstairs, but then, the kids probably had other things on their mind than proper security. She’ll let it slide this time.

She can see the backs of three heads sitting on the couch. A long, blond ponytail, a bright orange and white ski cap, and a shaggy brown mess falling out of its bun in between them. Parker and Hardison turn and look at her when she walks in, but Eliot just hunches over like he’s trying to make herself smaller.

“Hi,” she says, frantically trying to come up with something that makes sense, something that will put him at ease, hell, something that will put _her_  at ease, but all she can manage is to open and close her mouth like a bloody fish.

Fuck it, she’s an actor. She can fake calm. That was the first thing she ever learned.

“Well I certainly hope you’re ready to do all the chores you missed. Making us take out the trash for four years, honestly. Do you know how many manicures I’ve ruined doing that?”

His shoulders drop, and he twists around slowly and smiles even slower. “No, ma’am. Sorry, Sophie.”

There are a few small scars that weren’t there four years before. His eyes are darker in his pale face, and from the uneven stubble on his jaw, no one bothered to teach him how to shave properly while he was… gone.

Her face hurts from smiling so hard when she looks at him. “It’s good to see you, Eliot.”

His lips are chapped and the lower one looks like it will split when he grins, but grin he does. “Good to see you too, Sophie.”


End file.
